Associations Among Ground-Surface Spiders (Araneae) and Other Arthropods in Mesic Flatwoods

Abstract

Mesic flatwoods in Florida are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activities, and although they are known to be important for many species of macrofauna, little is known of the arthropod assemblages that inhabit them. As arthropods can be utilized as indicator taxa, we characterized the assemblages of ground-surface spiders (Araneae) and other arthropods at 2 mesic flatwood sites in Hillsborough County, Florida, and used the Chao 2, ICE (incidence-based coverage estimator), and Michaelis-Menten means species richness estimators to extrapolate the true species richness of ground-surface spiders. Sampling was conducted over a 4-month period at the sites using pitfall traps, with spiders being identified to the level of genus or species, and other arthropods to the level of order. We identified 31 spider species from 27 genera in 12 families, with Lycosidae being the dominant spider family at both sites. However, Collembola and Formicidae were the most abundant arthropod taxa. Ground-surface spiders were not strongly associated with any typical prey groups, indicating that environmental factors might also be important in structuring this community. Our results indicate that more intensive sampling of these habitats would be required to comprehensively sample and identify all of the species present, but from a management perspective, our results appear to be relatively consistent with previous surveys elsewhere.